Mood and personality shaped the customers' remarks: the relationships between clients and dressmakers were intensely personal and unconstrained by bureaucratic or formal procedures. Some women stated their complaints in a matter-of-fact, descriptive way that suggested a desire to get things right rather than to assert a class prerogative. Mrs. E. G. Butler complained mildly - "I am sorry to tell you that I am not quite satisfied with the front of my new gown" - and then wrote ten days later to thank Anna for the changes that she had made. Elizabeth A. Seaman made clear her appreciation for a dress that hadn't come out quite right when she wrote, "Will you give me more room at the bottom of the skirt - I love the dress, but wasn't able to take long enough steps." Often the complaints combine the general and the specific. One woman began an angry letter from Washington, D.C., by asserting that a dress sent to her was "impossible for me to wear as it is" and then went on to criticize the cut, the color, and fit in very concrete terms. Other customers moved beyond anger over specific features to attacks on the Tirocchis' skills. One can only imagine how the proud Anna would have reacted to a client's allegation that "neither dress was carefully finished"; or to another's that a waist was "a failure" with flaws so obvious that "I can't understand why you could not have seen [them]"; or to a third's threat that "If it is possible to make it fit..., I will be glad to have it otherwise I will have to get one somewhere else." The outbursts of anger testify that customers identified so intensely with the most minor details of their clothes that they saw errors as personal insults.(19)

Clients repeatedly demanded the Tirocchis' time and attention in ways that recalled mistresses' unbounded claims on their servants' time. They failed to recognize that the dressmakers were businesswomen with demanding schedules. A Fall River woman wrote on Friday, March 2, 1923, to announce that she would be in Providence on the following Monday for a fitting, clearly assuming that she could be accommodated, and breezily announced that "I have decided to have my clothes made this month instead of April." A Providence client wrote to say that she would appear for a fitting at a certain time on the following day, and another customer wrote a long letter peremptorily demanding two fittings in one day. The latter obviously thought nothing of requiring the shop to drop other work in order to turn its primary attention to fitting, sewing, and fitting her again. A Connecticut woman wheedled instead of demanding: "Can you not arrange it that way? and would it be possible for you to have both my dresses ready?I know you are just as busy as can be but perhaps some one who lives nearer would be willing to wait." Customers often complained childishly that someone else had gotten preferential treatment from Anna and Laura.(20)